i have just started playing this particular game, i got the latest p[pacth (2.02) from the site, but the game is sending me mental. i love the x wing games, but this seems so buggy and so bloody hard its not funny!

for instance, i have just managed to join the rebellion and i am doing the training missions. flying against the TIEs in the x wing is mindbending. i hit it three times with a concussion missile head on and it took no damage and tie's are supposed to have no shields? whats that about!

in fact i used the mssiles because the laser cannons just dont work. i have them charged to over 100%, i have them set to regular charge rate, and it still doesnt seem to be enough. this must be a bg, because how on earth can you attack with no lasers! of course if you set the recharge rate to maximum you slow your ship down far too much to take on a tie.

There are tons of bugs, but I don't remeber this being one of them. I usually fly with shields at normal and lasers at full in combat situations. I may take the lasers down to 0 if I need to do some catching up, though. But in any case, you should be able to nail a TIE fighter in a single shot, assuming you have all four guns firing at once, which I always do when engaging TIEs. And make sure your lasers are set to automatic convergence - that helps. But even if you have done none of these things, you should still be able to destroy a TIE fighter in two or three shots.

Yeah, some missions have bugs, when suddenly the "film" stops without seeable reasons... but I got it to work around by changing difficulty or avoiding targeting enemies to show them up in the CMD (the family mission 1b2m3fg is an example for; after destroying the first two waves of Starchasers "on sight", rest of mission never stucks).

Weapons always were functioning well (but one should load them to full red in terms of gaining firepower and greater distance possible for targeting), but first shot may be uncounted when loosing target lock. On greater targets you can fire "blind" (downwards about 1,38) and the (counted) hits will be shown, if one of the video options is on (3D Hardware particel-effects), but in deed the y-key (laserconvergence should be used here).

If something can't be destroyed, it is programmed "invincible", showing 1% hull. Programmers can add shields to crafts normally without, up to 200 percent. But hitting absolutely without any effect or result (the ties should evade)... ???

fly high above any target (try this with gun or laser platforms/stations), until you reach "12 o'clock". Look down on your target an make an attack run...

You will 100% have problems to get that target into the aiming circle, to get a green lock, almost problems to fly straight (down). It revealed to me once I was dogfighting with some ugly experimental ties, wondering why I was so bad in hitting them, when aiming at their six. Must be some kind of zero axis (through the MOD), which results in bad (programed) calculations...

Makes it a bit harder to destroy golans from beneath (out of range of golan lasers). Trick: move the cursor above the target and jump into the map! Leave the map and look, where the cursor stopped. Target lock? Fire with keyboard-commands.